LECTURE: Lisa Corrin, "The Topless Cellist and the Joan of Arc of the Avant-Garde: Charlotte Moorman’s Feast of Astonishments, 1960s-1970s"

The Topless Cellist and the Joan of Arc of the Avant-Garde: Charlotte Moorman’s Feast of Astonishments, 1960s-1970sLisa Corrin, Ellen Philips Katz director of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art; and senior lecturer in art history, Northwestern University

Lisa Corrin will discuss the life and contributions of Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991)—performance artist, curator and “the Joan of Arc of the Avant-Garde.” Known through the indelible image of her playing the cello topless save for a pair of strapped-on miniature television sets, Corrin will offer a more complex but equally powerful portrait of a girl from Little Rock, Arkansas, who metamorphosed into a seminal and barrier-breaking artist and impresario in the 1960s and 1970s. Trained at Juilliard, Moorman’s dedication to a radically new way of looking at music and art took many forms, some extreme, from playing the cello while suspended by helium balloons over the Sydney Opera House to performing on an “ice cello” in the nude. A muse to Nam June Paik she was also an unequaled popularizer of experimental art finding imaginative ways to bring new art from around the globe to the broadest possible public by literally taking it into the streets of New York. The Block Museum of Art organized the first international traveling exhibition about Moorman, which was named by The New York Times art critic, Holland Cotter one of the top 10 best in 2016.